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Amid growth, Lafayette's Flatirons Community Church plans to launch a school

Pastor: 'Why can't we make whatever God wants to do here available all over the world?'

By Anthony Hahn

Staff Writer

Posted:
05/15/2016 09:00:00 AM MDT

Updated:
05/15/2016 01:43:58 PM MDT

People raise their hands during the service at Flatirons Community Church in Lafayette in April 2015.. (Paul Aiken / Staff Photographer)

After years of growth and expansion throughout Lafayette, the Flatirons Community Church now looks to capitalize on its proven business model in another market: education.

During a sermon earlier this week, church leaders announced plans to build and launch its own school in the fall of 2017.

While specifics for the project remain scarce, Pastor Jim Burgen detailed preliminary plans for the school during a service earlier this week.

The church hopes to launch the school by the fall of next year, allocating enough space for students K-3, adding a grade each year.

Under the church's direction the school will operate under a "classical Christian education" curriculum — the goal of which is to equip students to evaluate knowledge in the light of scripture, achieve academic excellence, to be thoughtful, and glorify God, according to the church's website.

The Lafayette-based megachurch, which boasts an average weekly attendance of roughly 17,500, has continually outgrown its space over the past 15 years as its rapid expansion has fueled the need for larger venues.

Before the church settled in its current location, a 162,000-square-foot campus at 355 W. South Boulder Road, the church shuffled throughout the city in search of space to accommodate its rapid rise.

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"If you would have asked me five years ago if I thought Flatirons would ever have its own school, I would have looked you right in the eye and told you 'over my dead body,'" said Burgen to an audience earlier this week. "I haven't seen a lot of Christian schools done well."

Plans for the school come as part of the church's efforts to partner with parents on the education of their children; a program that includes creating and expanding Bible-based resources to equip and encourage parents, and create a biblical world-view curriculum for parents of children who attend public, private, or home schools, according to Burgen.

"Where a student attends school is far less important than whether or not his parents were or were not actively involved in the student's personal, spiritual, and emotional life," he said. "I've had thousands of kids come through my ministry, some of the worst, most immoral kids you'd ever meet went to the local Christian school."

In addition to the alternative nature of the school's curriculum, student participation will allow for a more experimental model: a mix between traditional, in-class attendance and partial participation through lessons live-streamed online.

"This will make it possible for our school to be available world-wide," said Burgen. "Why can't we make whatever God wants to do here available all over the world?"

With classrooms equipped with technology and resources that allow for such access, the school's price tag will look to a 'floating income-based tuition' to help offset the cost.

"As a private, non-government funded school we wont get any money from the government," said Burgen. "So it costs money. We are going to do our best to keep that as low as possible."

As plans for the school represent the most recent in a string of expansion efforts for the church, residents of Lafayette continue to struggle with adjusting to how the church impacts the surrounding community and whether long-standing exemption laws are in line with the growth of such churches.

While the church has seen its share of pushback on ideological issues from some Lafayette residents, the most resistance in recent years has been directed toward issues involving traffic, infrastructure, businesses, quality of life and tax base.

Though details of the school's location have yet to be made more broadly public, land owned by the church throughout the city — including a roughly 24-acre land parcel near Peak to Peak Charter School — may give insight into its development plans.

Representatives of Flatiron's Community Church were unavailable for comment Friday.

The church will hold informational meetings regarding plans for the school on Saturday and Sunday at the church's Lafayette campus and its west campus in Golden.

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